Changes

Southern historian T. Harry Williams, the leading expert on Long, has a mixed evaluation that is mostly positive. Williams argues that Long stands without a rival as the greatest of Southern mass leaders. He asked the Southern United States to turn its gaze from "nigger" devils and take a long, hard look at itself. He asked people to forget the past, the glorious past and the sad past, and address themselves to the present. There is something wrong here, he said, and we can fix it up ourselves. Bluntly, forcibly, even crudely, he injected an element of realism into Southern politics. As Williams notes, not without reason did one of his unfavorable critics say that Long was the first Southerner since Calhoun to have an original idea, the first to extend the boundaries of political thought. Above all, Williams argues, he gave the Southern masses hope. He did some foolish things and some wrong things. There is a tragedy in the story, and perhaps it is not entirely his fault that he did not become the South's peerless Progressive. Perhaps the lesson of Long, says Williams, is that if in a democracy needed changes are denied too long by an interested minority, the changes, when they come, will come with a measure of repression and revenge. Perhaps the gravest indictment that can be made of Southern politics in recent times is that the urge for reform had to be accomplished by pressures that left in leaders like Long a degree of cynicism about the democratic process.<ref>T. Harry Williams, "The Gentleman from Louisiana: Demagogue or Democrat." ''Journal of Southern History'' 1960 26(1): 3-21.</ref>  

Southern historian T. Harry Williams, the leading expert on Long, has a mixed evaluation that is mostly positive. Williams argues that Long stands without a rival as the greatest of Southern mass leaders. He asked the Southern United States to turn its gaze from "nigger" devils and take a long, hard look at itself. He asked people to forget the past, the glorious past and the sad past, and address themselves to the present. There is something wrong here, he said, and we can fix it up ourselves. Bluntly, forcibly, even crudely, he injected an element of realism into Southern politics. As Williams notes, not without reason did one of his unfavorable critics say that Long was the first Southerner since Calhoun to have an original idea, the first to extend the boundaries of political thought. Above all, Williams argues, he gave the Southern masses hope. He did some foolish things and some wrong things. There is a tragedy in the story, and perhaps it is not entirely his fault that he did not become the South's peerless Progressive. Perhaps the lesson of Long, says Williams, is that if in a democracy needed changes are denied too long by an interested minority, the changes, when they come, will come with a measure of repression and revenge. Perhaps the gravest indictment that can be made of Southern politics in recent times is that the urge for reform had to be accomplished by pressures that left in leaders like Long a degree of cynicism about the democratic process.<ref>T. Harry Williams, "The Gentleman from Louisiana: Demagogue or Democrat." ''Journal of Southern History'' 1960 26(1): 3-21.</ref>  

===Long in American literature===

===Long in American literature===

Political historians, and—especially—novelists have explored the strange dictatorship Long created. Sinclair Lewis’s ''It Can’t Happen Here'' (1935), by a Nobel-Prize winning novelist, portrayed a genuine American dictator on the [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler]] model.<ref>[http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0301001h.html See the full text at]</ref>  Starting in 1936 the [[WPA]], a New Deal agency, performed the theatre version across the country. Written with the express purpose of hurting Long's chances in the 1936 election, Lewis's novel outfits President Berzelius Windrip with a private militia, concentration camps, and a chief of staff who sounds like Nazi propagandist [[Joseph Goebbels]]. Lewis also outfits Windrip with a racist ideology completely alien to Long and a ''Main Street'' conservatism he also never embraced. Ultimately, Windrip is a venal and cynical showman who plays to the conformist resentments Lewis diagnosed in ''Main Street'' and ''Babbitt.'' Perry (2004) argues that the key weakness of the novel is not that he decks out American politicians with sinister European touches, but that he finally conceives of fascism and totalitarianism in terms of traditional American political models rather than seeing them as introducing a new kind of society and a new kind of regime. Windrip is less a Nazi than a con-man-plus-Rotarian, a manipulator who knows how to appeal to people's desperation, but neither he nor his followers are in the grip of the kind of world-transforming ideology like Hitler's [[National Socialism]].  

Political historians, and—especially—novelists have explored the strange dictatorship Long created. Long has been considered a demagogue by some, and at times referred to himself that way.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=mHyeAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA261 Plain Folk of the South Revisited]</ref><ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=IAk7iu1WHnYC&pg=PA396 The Kingfish and His Realm: The Life and Times of Huey P. Long]</ref> Sinclair Lewis’s ''It Can’t Happen Here'' (1935), by a Nobel-Prize winning novelist, portrayed a genuine American dictator on the [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler]] model.<ref>[http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0301001h.html See the full text at]</ref>  Starting in 1936 the [[WPA]], a New Deal agency, performed the theatre version across the country. Written with the express purpose of hurting Long's chances in the 1936 election, Lewis's novel outfits President Berzelius Windrip with a private militia, concentration camps, and a chief of staff who sounds like Nazi propagandist [[Joseph Goebbels]]. Lewis also outfits Windrip with a racist ideology completely alien to Long and a ''Main Street'' conservatism he also never embraced. Ultimately, Windrip is a venal and cynical showman who plays to the conformist resentments Lewis diagnosed in ''Main Street'' and ''Babbitt.'' Perry (2004) argues that the key weakness of the novel is not that he decks out American politicians with sinister European touches, but that he finally conceives of fascism and totalitarianism in terms of traditional American political models rather than seeing them as introducing a new kind of society and a new kind of regime. Windrip is less a Nazi than a con-man-plus-Rotarian, a manipulator who knows how to appeal to people's desperation, but neither he nor his followers are in the grip of the kind of world-transforming ideology like Hitler's [[National Socialism]].  

Hamilton Basso wrote two novels looking at Long, ''Cinnamon Seed'' (1934) and ''Sun in Capricorn'' (1942). Basso was a slashingly witty critic of the moonlight and magnolia romanticism of the Old South that dominated the Southern mind before 1920. Like many proponents of a New South, he wanted modernizers to take over. ''Cinnamon Seed'''s Harry Brand incorporates more details from the historical Huey Long than any other fictional portrayal does, and much of the novel is so lightly fictionalized that only a single letter separates the characters and places from their real-life counterparts.<ref>For example Basso uses "Tillson" instead of "Wilson", "Janders" rather than "Sanders", "Gwinn Parish" for "Winn Parish".</ref>  Brand is a representative of the grasping and vulgar kind of new leadership which has rightly understood that the values of the Old South are played out but has replaced them with nothing but ambition and cunning. He is a greedy climber, not a demonic leader of the masses, and in fact he is ultimately not much more than an obnoxious and sticky-fingered lout, the kind who spits tobacco juice on the marble floors of his predecessors and pockets the ashtrays. In portraying his Long figure this way, Basso finds himself between the stools, critical of the spent aristocrats who cannot imagine a modern South, but disgusted also by the figures who represent the wrong kind of newness, the kind of modern South that comes to be if its development is left to default.<ref>Perry (2004)</ref>  

Hamilton Basso wrote two novels looking at Long, ''Cinnamon Seed'' (1934) and ''Sun in Capricorn'' (1942). Basso was a slashingly witty critic of the moonlight and magnolia romanticism of the Old South that dominated the Southern mind before 1920. Like many proponents of a New South, he wanted modernizers to take over. ''Cinnamon Seed'''s Harry Brand incorporates more details from the historical Huey Long than any other fictional portrayal does, and much of the novel is so lightly fictionalized that only a single letter separates the characters and places from their real-life counterparts.<ref>For example Basso uses "Tillson" instead of "Wilson", "Janders" rather than "Sanders", "Gwinn Parish" for "Winn Parish".</ref>  Brand is a representative of the grasping and vulgar kind of new leadership which has rightly understood that the values of the Old South are played out but has replaced them with nothing but ambition and cunning. He is a greedy climber, not a demonic leader of the masses, and in fact he is ultimately not much more than an obnoxious and sticky-fingered lout, the kind who spits tobacco juice on the marble floors of his predecessors and pockets the ashtrays. In portraying his Long figure this way, Basso finds himself between the stools, critical of the spent aristocrats who cannot imagine a modern South, but disgusted also by the figures who represent the wrong kind of newness, the kind of modern South that comes to be if its development is left to default.<ref>Perry (2004)</ref>